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PremiseI am currently playing Persona 5, a wonderful slice-of-life videogame on Japanese society (with a focus on Tokyo, which is the location for the events), and got the inspiration to write down an article about my personal, 3-year experience for Italian consulting firms. I was certain I was to write something about “the issue”, but Persona 5 just gave me the right cues to do so. So, let’s start!

Phase 1: building high expectations

I decided to join a consulting firm for that: high expectations. You’re told you have wonderful career opportunities, a fertile ground to grow your skills, and they also tell you that you’re going to make a good amount of money if you just keep going towards the top. This, of course, builds up expectations.

I was so happy to join, at first, so happy to have a brand in which I could feel part of. Lucky newcomers get this feeling soon: you’re involved in great, international cool projects while you’re – you think – a nobody in the great world of society (in which you probably just stepped into, if you’re there) who was blessed with the opportunity to learn quickly in a stimulating environment. Also, you’re guided. You’re constantly guided by someone, usually your manager. This makes you feel secure.

So, you feel secure, and in a bath of ever-coming opportunities. You get also a bunch of courses that tell you about great values. Those values are always great. I personally started to sponsor them, I felt like a happy army newcomer that loves his uniform.

Very well: all this “high expectations” stuff is mere illusion.

You cannot know though, in Phase 1. Phase 1 is just cool. You get to work at 9:00, you’re out at 18:15. Fine, isn’t it? No, it isn’t. You’re 15 minutes late. But you’re very, very excited, so you think it doesn’t matter.

Phase 2: living up to expectations

As days pass, you’re asked to commit more to your work. You’re assigned more tasks, and get the illusion that this means that they think you’re good, so they ask you more. Or that the project is so cool, so they need someone good at work. Which is you.

Whatever the reason, you end up leaving your office at 19:30. Brief relevant note: OVERTIME IS [usually] UNPAID.

Yeah, that’s right. You work. They just aren’t paying. Is it possible? It is.

The funny thing is, you still feel somewhat okay with that. You think that you’re gonna be paid. You think that you’re working for a reason: the project. You think that you should live up to the high expectations people around (especially, your manager) entrusted you with. It’s your mission.

Nice game, man. Now that you’re beginning thinking this way, you’re spiraling down into oblivion. Don’t think so? Are you sure that those are your thoughts? I was. I was wrong.

A good girl said to me “Oh, I see, they lobotomized you”. I think she was awesomely right about that.

So, you began working with high expectations, and you’re living up to them with some effort. You feel like you’re realising the dream of being a good self-made man. Maybe you even imagine yourself as a good father/mother. You’ll soon forget those thoughts. Follow me on Phase 3.

Phase 3: coping with expectations

I remember one day (that was not my last one) in which I found myself saying “Coffee w/ ice-cream is the only moment of happiness of my day”. I think I was at least half serious. My manager laughed, told me how could I come up with something like that.

I was still a good worker, those days. I did my best. I still had hope. I thought that my project was neat, that I liked doing my best, after all. Yeah, maybe I was giving up some free time, but I felt that was a just choice.

My friends were worried about me, and one day a good one asked me why I was “disappeared”. I answered I was just doing my job. That I was tired, and had less time than before. I remember clearly that I thought “Poor child”. Poor idiot, I was.

Well, this quickly escalated towards the abyss. I was stepping down my stairway to hell. Or, was it the stairway to lower rooms? Well, that doesn’t change a bit.

It was ten-o’-clock. I was at the office, working. Had a quick call with a friend, telling him “I feel nice. I feel at home.” I’m… scared about that. I was in an empty room, alone, without sunlight, without hopes, nor dreams, nor personality. I was hollow. But I couldn’t feel it. It just felt… comfortable.

There is more: when you find yourself in that state, you have to justify it to yourself. You gave up on everthing else than work, so work must be nice for you. This means that you’re 200% into it, and you… likely love your manager.

People around you are losing everything they have. As said before: hopes, dreams, personality. Any objections to that that may arise from any workaholic is overwhelmed by the fact that YOU’RE NOT LEAVING YOUR WORKSTATION until late in the evening. At that time, you’re exhasuted. You just automatically give up on your social activity to survive. You’re not totally aware of that, though. You think it’s normal. I thought it was normal too.

That’s game for them. Game over for you. You cannot do anything at this point. Or, maybe, you are lucky enough that it just happens…

Phase 4: coping with expectations BURNOUT

I was tired. Very tired, I mean: sleepy. I had some family problems too, so I was sleepy and worried. One of my managers was also keeping high pressure on my work. Passively complaining about my low performance. I took the initiative and talked about that with the other manager. He said that it was a problem, that I should keep up the good work. I told him I couldn’t, as I was out of resources, that I needed help, that things could be actually managed better. He answered me:

“Keep your head low and just listen to my advices”

I warmly answered that I was a professional and, as such, I had to express my opinion. He talked with the other manager, menacing to remove all my activities from my task list. Few minutes later he called me and re-assigned all the work.

The thing escalated when I expressed my strict need to come back home ON TIME (at 18:00). He said it was impossible, and that a talk with my Performance Manager was needed. They suggested me to change work.

Well, I refused. This brought me to Phase 5.

Phase 5: forced dismissal

Oh, nice. So, I was staying. They couldn’t do anything to change it, I had a strong contract. Or… could they?

Time passed. I felt frustrated. Disengaged. Those feeling were conveyed in a decision: resignation. Oh, finally!

They asked me to stay: they could change things for some time. I could work on a single project, and keep a sustainable working schedule, 9:00 to 18:00. Oh, fine. Really? Why not before? I was surprised. Even a bit excited for the resign->victory transformation.

What I missed, though, was that I was being carried by a conveyor belt far away from headquarters. In an incinerator? No, close enough: in quarantine.

They assigned me to a shallow project. Few activities. Few people. The project actually *could* be nice. But there was no intention to make it nice.

I did my best, by all means. Reached great results. Client was happy. Oh, about that, I need a sub-chapter here. Quick and painless.

Client is satisfied: you deserve a promotion! (Or maybe not?)

Previous year was over. Previous client said to us “Your work is of superior quality”. It was an influential one. My manager was satisfied. He was promoted. I was… well… left in the same position (in the well). Also, no bonus on salary. Yearly bonus is what all employees ache for. I was left without it.

No treasure. No level-up.Not a game you’d play. Wouldn’t you agree?

End of the little parenthesis. So, I was dumped. I was beginning to breathe again. But I realised a thing: I was not growing. I was not learning anything. And that was intentional. I had been intentionally frozen.

Well, my life is fire-aligned, so I thawed.

Phase 5b: forced dismissal free restoration of self

Hello, World! Hello world again. Oh, well, I resigned. I managed to resign. I’m so very happy about that decision right now.

I feel free to chase my dreams. To do what I love. To write articles, even!

I’m planning to complement my Computer Science studies with Biomedical Engineering, and then embarking on a great journey towards the innovation frontier. For now, I’m writing stories and exploring my creative horizons (have a look if you like).

That bad dream is over.

I wrote this article to keep you AWAY from those bays. There is NO opportunity in big consulting firms. They make you feel right, but it’s just illusion.

Follow your passions: there are lots of heart-taking jobs (note: “taking”, not “sealing”). Look for them. Seek them. Strive for them. Keep away from the spinning hell of nothingness called counsulting.

Extra Phase: Special Thanks

I’d like to thank that girl from before. She tried to save me while I was dragging her down with my misplaced enthusiasm. She’s a great girl. I hope the best for her (she’s already out of that work, therefore safe, I’m glad).

I’d like to thank my friend, that thought about me when I was “disappearing”.

I’d also like to thank another girl in that place, who has the courage to keep being herself even while working there. She’s strong, too. I admire her.

I’d like to say a big thanks to Arcaniversitas Live-Action Role-Playing Game: that fictional experience helped me realising that I was living in a fictional world.

Thank you all. Your helped me making it. Living, breathing, and having feelings, hopes, dreams and a personality again.

Hello everyone! Today I introduce you “A Voyage into Mind”, a cycle of articles revolving around the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator axes. This first article is on the Introversion/Extraversion axis, and focuses on how differently the two types generate resources and interact with their inner and outer world.

Intraversion and Extraversion: Our Attitude Towards the World

In “Psychological Types”, Carl Gustav Jung defines Introversion and Extraversion as different approaches in how we acquire information from the outer world (through Perception or Intuition) and in how we evaluate that information (through Thinking or Feeling). As an approach, it defines two strategies per each function we use to interact with experience and to understand it.

To keep this simple, let’s say that our inclination towards Intraversion or Extraversion defines how we interact with the world.

According to Jung’s theories, the Introvert see the outer space as “different from him”, therefore potentially dangerous, while the Extravert tries to transform the outer world into something that is kindred to him, therefore less worrying.

These attitudes incentivise the Introvert to satisfy his needs by his own to keep safe, while pushing the Extravert out in search of new links, to make the world a safer place.

Safety is, indeed, by all means our main istinctive priority besides from breathing, eating and reproducing, and Intraversion or Extraversion define how we can properly satisfy it while gathering the resources we need to keep going.

Having reason as our most powerful tool to understand and control our surroundings, though, these mechanisms apply to our everyday life integrating with its conclusion, and as a driver for choice, instead of a rigid criterium.

Comfort: how Intraversion and Extraversion Come into Play

Comfort is a feeling that arises when we feel secure. We’ll see when an Introvert and an Extravert feels comfortable, and when he feels challenged by the world, thus tense and worried.

An Introvert feels comfortable when his personal space is respected: the world around him is not invading his own, and this mean that he can decide when it is the right time to bring something in their sphere, carefully understand it, and finally include it in as a new element of their micro-cosmos. I’d say that when an Introvert gives his energy to someone, it is indeed a great gift, for two reasons: first, he is the producer of his energy, he spents lots of effort to create that energy, and he’s giving it to another being which he still feels as different from himself – therefore he has small guarantee that he’ll return the given energy! – and second, he’s keeping someone inside their sphere, they are seeing something different and potentially dangerous as worth of their attention and care – which I feel being a wonderful kind of warmness.

An Extravert, on the other side, feels comfortable when he feels the outer space is near him: he strives to interact with many people, to expand his horizon while giving as much as he can to make the receivers happy, grateful, and willful to give back. When other people keep the distances, isolates them, decide that interaction with them is not worthwhile, Extraverts feel cornered and menaced: while being still able to produce energy, their energy is not going anywhere, the “coldness” of the world around them is unbearable, and their warmth is wiped out. Note that Introverts are much more screened from “the coldness of the void”, and can produce energy by their own through much more ease. Furthermore, an Extravert needs more interaction to keep warm: a great effort in giving by an Introvert can seem a little one for an Extravert.

This means that Introverts risk to be seen as “cold” by the other (energy-needing) side, while Extraverts can be seen as “scorching” by their (space-needing) counterpart.

Case wants that I’m playing with a space strategy game these days, therefore I’m using this game as a metaphor for the next section, to further look into these two roles and their interactions.

Cruel Invaders and Selfish Producers: a Space War-Game Metaphor

In this game you are a space emperor, you have some planets in a universe made of galaxies, where each galaxy is made of plenty of solar systems. Your aim is develop your economy, researches and fleet. To reach these aims, you need resources. You can obtain resources only by two means:

from your planets, through mining;

from other willful players that decided to help you grow (or exchange some kin of resource with another);

from other players, through breaking into their defences and their fleet, plundering their planet.

A fleet is made of cargoes and battleships, while defences are made of effective, static ground forces that can counter an attack.

To increase your points and improve your rank, you can follow, basically, three styles of play:

“Turtle”: you focus on mines and defenses, sheltering in your planets and hoping that no other player can overcome them to plunder your goods. You do like commerce and gifts, of course, but you are self-sufficient the most time, and like to be undisturbed;

“Raider”: you attack planets from which the effort made to shatter its defenses is convenient in relation to the amount of resources you can plunder from that planet;

“Fleeter”: you build giant fleets and gain resources just by destroying everything you encounter and gathering the consequent debris fields.

While playing the game, I started as a shy Turtle, and tried to create some connections around me through creating an Alliance. After some time, I developed my researches and had the resources to build some fairly useful fighting ships. Then, I found some weak planets around me, and attacked them. Some were defenseless, so I just sent my cargo to plunder their resources, while others had fairly weak defensive structures, which I destroyed with my rather small army. In this case, my loot was greater, and my satisfaction was greater, though I felt sorry for the attacked player and sent a message in which I said him that if he accepts to join my alliance I’m going to give him some resources back. After a while, my main planet’s defensive structures got crashed by a bunch of missiles, and a stronger enemy fleet took out mine and plunder my resources. After that, I’m rebuilding a good defense, improving my researches and aiming to create stronger ships to counter-attack.

While being a game in which combat is the fun part for most players (just developing things can be entertaining, but you obviously feel you’re losing much of the game contents), it is interesting to see that, if you find yourself in a position in which you can obtain a fair income on your own OR a much greater income through attacking others, it is likely that you’re going to convert your strategy and attack.

Now, let’s see this game as a big metaphor: Turtles are Introverts, Raiders are in the mid (they have resources to build defences too) and Fleeters are Extraverts. Everybody is playing a game, and everybody need resources. Introverts invested their resources to improve their ability to gain resources from their planets, while Extraverts put their effort in building fleets to send them out to other planets and gain from them. They also need a fairly strong alliance to grow fast.

The interesting part is: as an Extravert, when the option to gain lots of resources from other presented, I did change my strategy from Turtle to Raider. My Feeling component, though, stopped me by exploiting this without giving anything back, so I built my way of giving back what I obtained from other players (the definition of an alliance, and some other contents).

This happens because of Ethics: in a game, you play to win, because this makes the game fun. If you play to stay in the middle, the game loses its sense IF it is a game in which contents are fairly bare, and with that I mean that the strategic / competitive part of the game constitutes nearly all the game’s meaning. And the game in our example is this kind of game. There was something in me that turned on even in a game like this, and is feeling sorry if you damage someone else: empathy.

The next chapter talks about Ethics, Values and their relation to the strategy we choose to gain resources.

I think that mankind is amazing in how Reason and Feelings interacts. We have an ancient system working to keep us alive, that was defined millions of years ago, and Reason, which came out later, that is the ability to remember, to understand and to give meaning to things. While I think the use of “good” and “bad” in Ethics can be problematic, I do think that Values are wonderful to be seen in act: they give depth to our characters, and a strength that can build wonderful artifacts. Values are the point in which our Reason and our Feelings meet: we want to reach goals basing on what our ancestral system needs, but can orchestrate them to reach goals that can help us and others to improve our knowledge of the world, and our peace and prosperity. This is, though, contents for another article, so let’s get back to our business!

Need makes a person unstable, because it makes him lunge to bridge the gap between discomfort and safety. Values tells what a person should and shouldn’t exploit to bridge that gap. Stability helps the person to be objective, and feel that he can easily bridge the gap without damaging others.

Let’s see how both Introvert and Extravert people change their approach when they are stable, normal or unstable.

Stable Introversion: the person is aware he can do well by himself and doesn’t ask resources from unwillful people by any mean. He also understands that not everyone is a danger, so he warmly welcomes people in his world after having understood them. Being an effective producer, whose energy is not cut by his fears, he can also give parts of his resources to others. He also has the ability to receive from others, especially the ones that he has hosted inside his sphere.

Normal Introversion: the person can answer to his energy request. He usually is sceptic to interaction with others, and sees anyone as a menace. He does open his doors to the ones that have the kind attitude to interact with him, though. His fears are cutting his energy, because they demand attention and effort to keep the screens up, so he cannot always give much of what he produces.

Unstable Introversion: the person cannot answer his energy request, so he depends on others. Being introvert, he needs aliases to interact with others, which can protect him by being invaded. He can be deceitful by any mean, and aims to plunder resources from others by “trapping” them in his sphere. He seldom give anything, and when he does, it is aimed to be an allure to call resource-givers in his web.

Stable Extraversion: the person is aware that he needs others to “break even”, but he’s not asking anything from anyone: he just gives his best to other people, and also knows how to give without being obnoxius. He’s kind as a spring sun, and is able to produce energy from lots of people, even for Intraverts who decide to accept him. He knows that he needs resources for himself too, and has no problems to take his share because people that benefit from its energy usually gives something back to him too, and he needs just a bit from each one, because he has a lot of contacts. Even when having lot of “backers”, he values gifts from others, especially the ones from Introverts.

Normal Extraversion: the person is aware he needs others, and relies on them. He does give energy to others, but always expects a return for that energy. When someone can’t or just won’t give back, he feels unaccepted, and could feel resentful. He dislikes the ones that don’t accept him because he cannot establish the “commercial bound” he needs. He dislikes introverts that stop giving, or take him at a distance.

Unstable Extraversion: the person gives modest energy to others while asking much more than he gives. He’s not able to produce well because fears to be rejected are cutting off part of its energy production rate. This makes him have less connections, and also less aware of the fact that it is not easy to give back when you’re not receving much. Therefore, he can invade the space of others, stealing resources through limiting their freedom or demanding their attention.

As it is easily noted, the Unstable versions both draw resources, while both the Stable ones are able to give more than they take. Stability is indeed a great way to make this world a better one, and also makes our personal world a brighter place to live in.

As a final note, I’d like to recall that we all are humans, and, by that, we all take mistakes and are giving our best to care for ourselves and, when we can, for others. Both Introverts and Extraverts feel lonely or unaccepted and, while we have different strategies to keep up with our lives, we should do the best to understand each other and leave peacefully, gratefully, and happily together.

In a Nutshell

– Identity is based on our neural system, and consists of Nature and Personality. At a more abstract level, it can also be described by Dilts’ pyramid: Environment, Behaviour, Skills & Knowledge, Value & Beliefs, Mission;

– Virtual Reality will allow people to change their appearance, and this will greatly influence how people conceive Identity. People will probably demand one stable appearance to be recalled every now and then;

– Self-Definition will grant people a total degree of freedom by defining even Personality and Nature. Identity will be a continuosly dynamic entity, and everyone will be allowed to experience everything life can offer.

Someone said that ethics derives from the model of our current society. While I only partially agree to this statement, let’s have a closer look to what do we usually mean the concept of “Identity”, and how this concept will probably change after the discovery and development of the forthcoming technological advancements.

Making things simple and straight, Identity is what makes us say “I”. The question is: “What do we mean with this word? What is our image of the self?”

An Introduction to Identity

According to Robert B. Dilts, NLP author, Identity is somewhere in between our Mission and our Values, or, we could say, where our Mission and Values meet. We can see identity in a broader way as the entire Dilts’ Pyramid, which includes (from the top):

Mission

Values and Beliefs

Skills and Knowledge

Behaviour

Environment

It’s quite interesting to intuitively assess that the top and the bottom of the Pyramid change is faster than the mid-level one. We can take a step further, and see Identity as something that change with time, and has Skills and Knowledge as its stable part. We’re defined by our story, which builds knowledge, and experiences, which train skills. Experiences come from Environment, while our story depends mostly on the Mission we (actively or passively) chose as a driver.

Moving our first step from abstract to concrete models, we find personality and Nature. Personality makes things interesting, while Nature make them simple. Personality shapes mostly Mission, Values and Beliefs, while Nature defines Behaviour and Skills.

The last step towards concreteness is our brain model, which is where Personality and Nature are “coded”.

Technology and Identity: what it’s going to change

Now we share all the terminology, concepts and tools to speculate on what could – and probably will – happen in the mid- and long-term.

Virtual Reality

The first technological advancement we’re going to examine is Virtual Reality, intended as a 5-senses-pervasive experience of a parallel, virtual world.

First of all, people will be granted to define their appearance. Our body is our interface with the outer world, and deeply influence other people’s perspective on our Identity. What if we decide to make use of more than one phisical appearance? This could be somewhat confusing to others, because our brain tries to associate a univocal phisical description of the entity which is related to our Identity. What is going to happen if we decide to change appearance every day? Ahh, that would be tough! I foresee that people will demand a fairly stable appearance to which people can switch if asked. This will preserve the 1-to-1 association between psychological and physical description of a person, which is, again, Identity.

A major twist will also impact Mission: lots of experiences will be immediately available through virtual definition, hence long-term desires (i. e. Mission) will heavily change, because lots of them will be immediately satisfied. Here speculating is difficult: people could be satisfacted with high-definition virtual experiences, or decide to make life challenging through seeking Beauty in its closely infinite declinations. I also see these as two trends, where the first is going to start absurdely high (80-90% of the Virtual Reality users), and slowly decrease, while the second will accordingly raise. This is because of habit: habit is based on survival, and determines a “consumption rate” on activities: if you do something every day, you’ll get bored even if it’s exciting. This is true on (mostly) everything, from art (Maslow’s Pyramid top) to sex (Maslow’s Pyramid bottom).

Oh, well, this boredom/excitement mechanics will drive things, until…

Self-Definition

…until it’ll be possible to change even the way we are (alongside appearance and environment). Science will eventually discover how to define a complex, biological system, and which are the properties that define its behaviour. This won’t happen if and only if resources will be insufficient – which mainly means: computational time. I don’t think the definition of a mature biological system has some exponential-time subproblems, therefore I think this will happen in the long term.

We’ll be free to choose what to choose. That is somewhat overwhelming. What is going to happen? Who are we going to be? What will “Identity”, “Choice”, “Free-Will” mean?

My optimistic speculation is that the world will tend to global optimum. A sort of “enlightenment”, in which everyone will be able to live the widest variety of experience he can ever imagine, with imagination itself and the biological system which perceives the experience as the only limits. In this kind of world, Identity is circumstantial, because people tend to try every kind of (positive?) experience and can do this without harming anyone. This perspective leads to a life which is similar to a book without margin, and everyone is a writer with a wide imagination.

Self-Definition will make Identity as a totally dynamic flux which change through time and can have two or more parallel sub-branches.

Conclusions

While Identity today is seen as a fairly stable set of properties a person has, in the future it will be allowed to continuosly change, as it happens when you read books from different genres and same author: people will choose what to write in the great slate of the world, and their stories will cross and overlap as in a untold, unfold tale.

If you’re still asking yourself why the year in title is 2045, it was inspired by this ambitious project.

At a first glance, the experiment carried out on twitch.tv and referenced by some major newspapers seemed to me quite pointless: how can a game,

played by thousands of people at the same time,

with an input of one (or a few) commands per submission, and

with added delay (so that you can’t even guess what your command will actually do)

be of any interest? Facts told me that I was wrong, they said it through logic and emotion, and with such intensity that made me totally change my mind.

I’m not going to descrive how twitch worked (and still works), or to tell the while story. I’m going to focus on the major social, psychological and philosophical issues it opens. And that’s because there are so many of them! So, let’s get started.

From Trend to Myth, from Myth to Religion
I got acquainted with Twitch when some friends of mine told me of its existence. Inwas skeptical at that time, but it was undoubtful that lots of people already played it. Lots of people do lots of useless things lots of times, hence this is not the reason why my attention got caught.
Trend eventually became a “myth”: people actually found out an intriguing tale from the (approximately) white noise coming out of the game. The story told about a guy named Red who was assigned the difficult task to reach a goal while under chaotic winds. That reminds me of Ulixes trying to reach Itaca while Poseidon’s will hampers a straight voyage. Red had a team of valuable allies. Some of them was lost because of the will of an abstract entity (which is, actually, a group of players, together with casualty). Then, some random things happened. And that’s where the magic that enchanted me began.
First and foremost, because of game design, random commands brought the main character to try using a useless item (namely: “Helix Fossile”), multiple times, purposeless. The purpose was invented by the community: Helix Fossile, a chunk of bits, was elevated to the rank of god (who will someday awake). The repeated act of randomly selecting the item was something like “prasing the god”. Charming. That was finding sense out of nonsense.
The fact is, the whole story was given a sense: a wrong choice in the evolution of Eevee to Flareon [incoming names will be, mostly, pokémon names] was interpreted as “the raise of an evil prophet”, which later “banished the hero’s allies” (and that is improperly attributing casual events to entities); the evolution of Pidgey in Pidgeot, and the great amount of experience gain caused by some difficulties in making progresses on the game map was considered as a “initiation of a true, just prophet”. Even the input modes Twitch offered (anarchy and democracy) where assigned a moral value: anarchy was justice and democracy was the will of the evil god (“the Dome”, which is another item/pokémon). I found this quite fascinating: as it happens in the early stage of mankind’s history, when people cannot explain natural events, a god was called out and other major figures found themselves responsible of totally unrelated events.
All of that was, surely, for fun: nobody is interested in randomness, while giving funny, somewhat mythic meaning to events is always appealing. My opinion is, though, that all of that was not only for fun.
Anybody needs some assurance out of uncertainty. Even at the cost of inventing things. That’s engraved in our deeper nature. Anybody needs to believe in some “organizing reason”, in some good, powerful entity that could guide towards what is needed, or dreamed. Total randomness is unacceptable: it must be faced with irony or with given meaning. And Twitch opted for both.
So, in the end we have a purposely created god, the Helix, who guides the hero who consults him towards success. We have a prophet, an angel, a king, a prince(ss), and some random “all terrain veichle” (again: irony). We have a set of mythological creatures, a hero, and a destiny. That destiny was eventually accomplished. And this brings us to the second part of the article.

“E baciò la sua petrosa Itaca Ulisse”
Even if it’s a bit unclear how so many people managed to finish the game in an acceptable amount of time (around 20 days), the fact is that the game was finished: Itaca (which is the “Hall of Fame” in the game) was finally reached by Red.
In the game efforts actually converge to a determined goal: a symphony emerges from the white noise, and, slowly but relentlessly, guides the hero. The SNR (Signal/Noise Ratio) is variable, but everyone reading the story with a sufficient time-span can be aware of reached goals. Total randomness would require much more time. That time could be even abnormous (if some objectives were failed) and could tend to infinite. But we’re talking about 17 days. This means that the symphony was quite audible. And that’s awesome.
I found the whole thing awesome because it gives me a hope: as Red (even after some great loss, because of a evil-willing counter-symphony and randomness) approaches and eventually reaches his goal, mankind could follow the same difficult and glorious path. Even if our contribute to mankind is disordered (our action are doubtlessly sub-obtimal – that means we could surely do something more useful than what we’re doing now, like, I’m writing an article on Twich instead of writing down my Master Thesis, so, you know… :P), even if we can’t even guess how our contribute will actually impact the world, that contribute is still useful. That contribute still follows some symphony. And we’re giving, and will relentlessly give, that contribute, because our nature compels us to do so. Is there a “Helix” guiding us in our journey, or are we whispers in the white noise? It doesn’t really matters, because future can hear us. And I foresee, and deeply hope, that we will someday reach our “Hall of Fame”. Twitch gave us a fair empirical evidence on that! 😀

Aaand, that’s all for now! I hope you enjoyed the reading. If not, remember that the article is son of randomness (or of the will of some major entity) as I am, so, don’t blame me! Next one will be surely better, if we trust in science! 😉

Welcome, dear web traveler, to my personal blog! I never thought about creating a personal site, blog or page of any kind, even if I often create pages about projects I work on. While writing my second article about Project Management innovation, I felt it was the right time to open up a space which talks about me, alongside my ideas, projects, hopes and dreams. Well, somebody could ask “Why am I reading this blog?” First of all, this page will work as a HUB for projects I’m working on. The majority of these are open projects. With “open project” I mean a project where your opinions and ideas and especially you as a part of it are welcome. You can find out which areas I’m currently interested in and working at the Interests page. Another reason to your question would be “Trying to understand who I am”. If you find this answer, please email me immediately. I’m eagerly looking for it for decades. Take a look at the “About Me” page if you have this kind of interest! Third reason is the reason which brought you here in the first place. I’m sure there is an explicit or explicit one, somewhere, inside or outside you. I’m not sure this is the best opportunity the world will give you, but I think it could be a nice opportunity to know something and someone new – and to give the same occasion to me too! 🙂 If you’d like to contact me directly, feel free to email me at daniele.difilippo@outlook.com Wishing you a pleasant stay, see you in the next post!